Sessions Survived
Your progression is defined by your sessions survived. Track this on your character record sheet. Sessions survived is an important prerequisite for virtues and issues.
XP & Learning
Earn experience (XP) for your accomplishments, risks taken, and wealth assumed. XP is spent to improve skills and buy virtues.
Gaining XP
XP must be earned.
The Bookkeeper will award XP befitting your accomplishments at the end of every session:
- Little to no progress towards a goal earns 15 XP
- Progress towards a goal earns you 30 XP. Kill monsters. Uncover a clue. Get some money.
- If you succeed at a moderate objective, earn 60 XP. Kill a miniboss. Get lots of loot.
- Succeeding in a major goal gets you 120 XP. Clear a dungeon floor. Finish a venture.
To gain XP for an accomplishment, you must directly participate in it. Usually, the entire gang will get the total, but if someone sits out a big risk or plan, the Bookkeeper may award them less.
Bonus XP sources (distress, satisfying urges, etc.) are added to the whole.
PRACTICE
To improve or learn a skill, you must have practiced it. Practice is gained by using a skill.
Some skills are easier to practice by their nature. It is possible to gain practice in a skill even if you do not have levels in it.
Levelup
During levelup, buy 2 different skill levels or buy 1 skill level and 1 virtue / issue.
To improve a practiced skill by 1 level, spend XP equal to 10 times the level you wish to attain. For instance, it takes 30 XP to raise a skill from level 2 to level 3 and 10 XP to attain level 1 from 0.
You may not improve the same skill twice in a levelup.
After levelup, your practice resets in all skills.
Remember: 1 levelup per session; 2 heals per day. Since you levelup at meals or sleep, you’ll often heal and levelup concurrently.
TEACHING
To be taught a skill, you must access a knowledgeable repository of it, be it a book or a character skilled in it and Instruction.
Practice may be gained from a teacher by an hour-long lesson. To teach another character, the teacher must forgo their own learning opportunity during a lunch or night’s sleep and use an hour of time. You may gain practice from a teacher so long as their skill level is superior to your own. Teachers are limited, however, as they may not bestow practice in a skill unless their Instruction level + 2 exceeds your level in said skill.
Practice may be gained from books via an hour of reading. Books capable of bestowing practice have a skill level. You may gain practice from a book so long as the book’s skill level is superior to your own.
Stabling
As ambitions grow, so too will your company.
When your first character attains 1000 total XP, you can opt to begin a second character, thus engendering a stable.
A stable of characters comes with several conditions:
- You may only control 1 character at a time. You must choose which character to control at the start of each session. Only this character may receive XP at end of session.
- Inactive, “stabled” characters must possess or be provided at least one shilling per day of inactivity to afford food and housing. Advance arrangements, such as employment, prepaid rent, or owned housing may waive this fee.
Inactive characters may heal once per day, and receive stitches from the lifestyle they are paying for.
If an inactive character runs out of money or cannot be provided more, they will face destitution, suffering a random theft or minor wound each day, all while accruing Hunger stress.
The following are special character progression rules.
trait capacity
Earn +2 maximum trait capacity every 12 sessions survived, allowing you more virtues and/or issues.
Urges
The Bookkeeper may allow you an urge. Choose from the list of suggestions or make it up. Satisfying an urge earns you 40 XP. Urges should not be repeated.
suggested urges
- Personally haul more than £50 in ancient gold from a tomb or venture site (see gold fever.)
- Personally kill a monster larger than you.
- Reach 3 or more malus this session.
- Eat a meal made with a sinful or forbidden ingredient.
- Gain 3 or more comfort at a brothel, bar, or smoke parlor.
- Double your money in one session.
- Spend your last XP point on a morbid skill level.
- Defeat a specific foe/challenge that humbled you in the past.
- Go a week without rolling a single skill.
- Personally complete your gang’s current objective.
- Bring low a creature with rope, either by tying them up or stunning them.
- Suffer severity-3 wound in frontline combat.
- Steal part of or all of a human body. It must have value. Includes knucklebones, plagaliths, corpse wax, and mummies.
- Take someone unawares, surprise them, or exploit their weakness.
- Build or repair an item of wooden armor.
- Escape a tight place.
- Assist in an Avethan ritual or rite.
- Restore an air of propriety and civility following bloody violence.
- Receive payment for masonry-related work or violence.
- Photograph a subject that caused you distress.
- A companion uses a reaction bonus you provided.
- Severely injure someone who threatened your companion.
- Quickdraw someone.
- Encounter something from fairytales (a castle, a serpent, a fairy, etc.)
- Gain access to somewhere you’re not supposed to be.
- Spite the Other in some way (kill a spriggan, nail a horseshoe to a tree, etc.)
- Plan and execute a stratagem or tactic.
- Steal from a target larger than you.
- Bring down a tree or a large monster.
- Recover from weary stress.
- Test a fringe medical theory on an ally.
- Get a reward for violent or carceral labor.
- Produce or sell a brew or distillate.
- Find and eat an unusual ingredient.
- Materially harm someone’s wealth or reputation.
- Fully stop an attack with your shield or portable cover.
- Eat meat or produce poached from private, protected, or forbidden land.
- Eat a pixie or bug.
- Hear a secret not meant for you.
- Scalp or skin an intelligent creature.
- Eat quadruple the usual food at a meal
- Feed a square meal to at least 1 Avethan.
- Succeed a terror roll.
- Obtain or bestow a new scar.
- Keep a perpetual stew going for 3 sessions.
- Pack and transport at least 10 burden of goods or wealth to a venture site or to sale.
- Open something ancient, or at least antique.
- Feed your companions a meal fried in fat.
- Cause an ally to succeed a roll with your Play skill.
- Recover from 3 or more distress.
- Cause a roll to succeed with a faith point.
- Orchestrate the burial of a human body.